Translating the untranslatable

Proper names are not translatable. So they say. But John is Juan, Jean, Johan, and so on. Can we say that a name is adaptable but not translatable? In my opinion, a name is a name and should remain untranslated. Would a Spanish translator dare to write La señora Bovary on the cover of the book?

Talking about Bovary, yesterday I read a very interesting article about translation and Madame Bovary by Lydia Davis. She talks about the need for new versions of works already translated, though she finally challenges this idea. I cannot say that I agree.

If a character is reading a newspaper, say The New York Times, why in the Spanish translation is he reading El País? What if El País disappears? The answer is clear: we need a new translation. We can obviously say that everything is adaptable. But are we then being faithful to the original intention of the author or are we creating (or rather attempting to create) a new work of art? This simple example is enough, I think, to believe in generational revisions of translations.

When I translated Strindberg's Fröken Julie, I did it on a revised, scanned text edited by Gunnar Ollén. The original text had been amended by the editor, Seligman, and so did not respond to Strindberg's original intention. If the original text was already altered, what can we expect from its translations? Hence the need of a new translation in Spanish of Strindberg's most performed play. Another thing I did was change the title. The previous versions of the translation read La señorita Julia and all the names had been translated into Spanish, which I did not like. So I proposed the title La señoria Julie, keeping the protagonist's name as well as the other characters' names, namely Jean and Kristin.

In conclusion, names should remain untranslated. I believe in the curiosity of the reader, spectator, etc. to go and check the connotations of names. And if not, there are always the cultural footnotes.